The Battle for Terra Two Read Free Page A

mind." He took the photo from his pocket. "Here's who you'd be replacing."
    John stared at the snapshot. The man was in his midthirties, sandy-haired, blue-eyed, with a familiar ironic grin. He wore a jet-black dress uniform and high-peaked cap with gleaming visor. "Me," said John. "Only not me." He looked up. "My double on Terra Two?"
    "Your dead double," said the CIA Director, taking back the photo. "Major Harrison was killed in a motorcycle accident last week. Very T. E. Lawrence, but very bad timing. He'd just finished his doctoral dissertation at McGill and was to report to his new post in Boston."
    "Guan-Sharick was going to replace him?"
    Sutherland nodded. "He saw the accident and disposed of the body. Then he flicked through Shalan's portal and appealed to D'Trelna and L'Wrona for help."
    "Now that I'd like to have seen," smiled John. The smile faded. "So in another reality, I'm a corpse."
    He pointed to the photo. "What's that shroud he's wearing?"
    "Class-A uniform—CIA Counter Insurgency Brigade. Sort of a yankee doodle Waffen SS, now fighting in Mexico."
    "Mexico?"
    "But he's been seconded to the Urban Command garrison in Boston as intelligence officer." Sutherland laughed at Harrison's expression. "You're going to love Terra Two, John."
    "I'm not going to Terra Two." He looked across the Potomac, watching as a jet skirted the towers in Rosslyn, heading in to National Airport.
    The CIA Director's smile faded. "No one else can do it. If you don't go, bugs and killer machines will come swarming into this reality. They have to be stopped on Terra Two. And you're elected. Or rather, Major Harrison with his ganger connections is."
    "I won't ask what a ganger is, Bill," said John, facing Sutherland. "And I'm not elected—I wasn't running. I don't work for you anymore, I don't free-lance anymore, and I don't believe anything Guan-Sharick would say."
    "We have to assume he's telling the truth," said Sutherland. "To not do so would be criminally irresponsible."
    "You're saying I'm irresponsible?"
    It was Sutherland's turn to gaze across the river. "You left the Outfit in a tiff . . ."
    Harrison's face flushed, not from the cold. "No one pisses my people away."
    "And you were getting bored with the free-lance stuff when the K'Ronarins showed up," continued the director. "Then the biofab war, that battle under the moon. Blasters, mindslavers, starships, Pocsym, S'Cotar. Then it ended. Boom." He turned back to Harrison. "You married your Israeli friend, wrote a book about the biofab war and made an obscene amount of money."
    "Am making."
    "And now that you're the only one in this whole frigging universe that may be able to save it . . ."
    "Really, Bill."
    "You won't go. Why not?" He snapped out the last two words, like a drill instructor.
    "I don't want to die," said John easily. "That's a one-way trip."
    "You haven't a choice, buddy. You go, or we all die."
    "I have a choice."
    "Crock," said Sutherland. He held out the tan attache case. "Take this. Read it. It's everything Guan-Sharick gave the K'Ronarins. Give it back to me tomorrow at nine, along with your decision. Scholl's Restaurant on K Street— toward the back."
    John took it. They walked in silence to the footbridge, crossed it and stepped down into the hilly side street. "Can I drop you?" said Sutherland. "Long walk to Capitol Hill."
    John shook his head. "I could use the air."
    He was crossing Fourteenth Street and the sleaze strip when the young blonde in the bimbo suit fell into step beside him. "Something soft and warm for lunch, sir?" she asked.
    "No." John quickened his pace.
    She kept up with him as he moved past a row of strip joints. "It must be lonely, with Zahava away."
    Stopping, he turned, seeing her for the first time. "You."
    "Indeed," said Guan-Sharick. "The reports of my death . . ."
    "I heard."
    The S'Cotar appeared to slip an arm through his. "Let's stroll a bit—John and hooker."
    "Funny," he said, walking reluctantly beside the transmute.